VOLTVOGEL’S JOURNEY AFTER THE ACCELERATOR PROGRAM

Katharine summarizes: “The accelerator program really helped us to get where we’re today. We had done another program in the past, but it was not especially hardware focused. For us, it was incredibly necessary to learn the hardware-specific aspects of running a startup, because it’s so different to making a software startup. In terms of investing, how to test your ideas, and the prototyping session in particular was so useful for us. It’s completely different how you prototype software and hardware. And also, the community here is amazing: we met so many people that we could ask for advice to find out how do we go about this, who is the good supplier for this, or simply to have a crazy brainstorming session together with people, and they all are just here, in this space. You can’t find it anywhere else.”

When asked about the most useful thing learned in the accelerator program, Katharine says: “For me, the most useful thing I learned in the program was how to do the short testing cycles, so you try to really make the minimum version of the product that you need. So if you want to test how it looks, you make it look like a prototype, if you want to test how it works, you make it work like a prototype. But until you get there, there are lots of tiny prototypes that you can make at every stage. Learning how to do this, to iterate quickly and fail fast and cheaply was incredibly valuable for me, and I can definitely use this in the future.”